


everybody’s sick for something that they can find fascinating

by lovelit



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Biting, Choking, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:09:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24769807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelit/pseuds/lovelit
Summary: In the very center of the room, as self-possessed as any spider settled in its web, sits Elias at his desk.He watches, silent, as Jon staggers to his feet, as Jon drags himself closer to the desk. He waits until Jon gets close enough to press damp palms against the dark wood of the desk and then tilts his head just so, inhaling deliberately as though sampling the bouquet of a particularly fragrant wine.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 4
Kudos: 175
Collections: Heat Fic Summer 2020





	everybody’s sick for something that they can find fascinating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/gifts).



He’d assumed - or at least, he would have assumed if he’d thought about it before it began - that after the world had ended, he wouldn’t need to worry about human considerations like dynamics anymore. He _isn’t_ human anymore, after all, and should an avatar truly have any dynamic? Should an Archive given flesh experience the slick sensation of a beginning heat?

Well. Whether he should or shouldn’t, Jon can feel it starting to coil in his stomach as he draws nearer to the Panopticon. It feels like something he ought not to have to worry about, something where his own growing inhumanity and the changed laws of the world should both have made the lack of access to his suppressants a non-issue.

And yet, in the same breath, it feels like an inevitability. The Panopticon draws ever-closer on the horizon, with Elias - Jonah Magnus, truly, though Jon still privately thinks of him first as Elias - waiting within for his approach, and with its closeness comes, too, the closeness of his approaching heat. Every step closer to the Panopticon and to Elias makes heat throb in the depths of Jon’s gut, makes the breaths he’s no longer entirely sure he needs to take stutter in his chest, makes slick begin to soak his underwear in time with every pulse of his racing heart.

By the time Jon actually reaches the Panopticon, hours or days or weeks later, the throbbing pulse of the heat feels all-consuming. He all but drags himself up the tower, crawling on hands and knees up stairs that seem to go on forever and yet take no time at all to climb, and when he reaches the very top, he has no time to haul himself back to his feet before he finds himself in the very heart of the Eye. 

It’s a mockery of Elias’ old office, vast and circular instead of dark and angular. The bookshelf-lined walls are gone, replaced by what logic tells him must be glass but his own knowledge tells him is simply empty air, for even the very best glass would obscure the Watcher’s sight with its tiny imperfections. There are no entrances, and even as he is now, Jon cannot say how he moved from that swift and endless staircase to this place.

And in the very center of the room, as self-possessed as any spider settled in its web, sits Elias at his desk.

He watches, silent, as Jon staggers to his feet, as Jon drags himself closer to the desk. He waits until Jon gets close enough to press damp palms against the dark wood of the desk and then tilts his head just so, inhaling deliberately as though sampling the bouquet of a particularly fragrant wine.

Ordinarily, Jon thinks he’d be mortified, knowing that what Elias is actually scenting is his heat. Once upon a time, the mere thought of his boss being able to scent his slick would have had him embarrassed to ever show his face in the Institute again.

But things are different, now, aren’t they? Jon is no longer human, and Elias is no longer pretending at being what he’s not; at being harmless, being a beta, being _Elias Bouchard_ at all. The Institute is no longer just the Institute. The world is no longer the world.

And so, instead of mortification, what fills Jon is anger. Anger enough to have him surging up across the desk, a snarl vibrating in his throat, and were he more possessed of his thoughts and reason he might try to turn the Eye against Elias, to see which of them is most truly favored by their god. But with the heat surging in his gut, what instinct comes first is to lunge for Elias’ throat with teeth bared, the violence of the slaughter in his veins.

Even as he is now, he doesn’t see Elias move until his hand has shot up to grip Jon’s throat, sudden enough and with enough force to have him coughing and gasping as he struggles against it.

“Now, Jon, none of that,” Elias chastises, his voice as calm and even as if he’s remarking on an unfortunate turn in the weather. 

It takes the wind entirely out of Jon’s sails, and he’s left sagging into the grip on his throat, struggling for breath while Elias simply watches him, his gaze considering. Eventually, he loosens his grip just enough to let Jon gasp in a full breath, and then tightens it again to ensure that that’s all the air that Jon _can_ get.

“Now. Will you behave yourself?”

_Fuck you_ , Jon doesn’t say, because he can’t speak with Elias holding his throat like this. Not that he needs to speak, anyway; as soon as he thinks it, Elias sighs gustily and tightens his grip enough to hurt.

“There really is no need for this, you know,” he tells Jon. He manages to make it sound incredibly reasonable, no matter that Jon giving in to the knowledge of thousands upon thousands of hunts and ripping Elias’ throat out would probably be doing a grand service to the world.

Elias only arches a brow, then, and says, “Perhaps. But I do intend to keep my jugular where it belongs - I’ll admit, I’ve grown rather attached to Elias, and I have no desire to relocate - and you and I both know that you can’t overpower me in this state.” 

He pauses, letting Jon take another breath, and it doesn’t quite escape Jon’s notice that some of the swimming in his head isn’t just because of the limited oxygen.

“Quite. Do you know, I’d never been an alpha before? Alphas and omegas always seemed so easily distractible, and I did have so many things to focus on. But there was something of a draw to Elias - not that he would have had any idea how to make use of that, of course, and he barely even came across as an alpha most of the time - and, well, it’s not as though he couldn’t have stumbled into some sort of accident early into his tenure if alphas really did turn out to be so easily distracted.”

Another breath, and Jon nearly whimpers. The original Elias might not have come across as much of an alpha, and Jonah in his body had clearly made use of that in coming across as unassuming as possible, but he most certainly smells entirely like an alpha right now.

“There, there, Jon,” Elias soothes, reaching up to brush the thumb of his other hand across Jon’s cheekbone and clearly delighting in the way it makes him shudder.

“You did make me glad that I’d picked this body,” he goes on a moment later, tone once again conversational. “You walked through the doors of the Institute, and… well, I’m sure you'd have been compelling enough as a future Archive regardless, but I wouldn’t have been able to truly _appreciate_ the gift that the Eye had granted me without this body. So, you see, I’ve grown rather fond of Elias.”

Another breath. This time Jon does let out an involuntary noise, and Elias tilts his head just slightly to watch his face.

“Yes, I think that might just be enough,” he says after a few moments, and abruptly releases Jon’s throat entirely. He removes his other hand while Jon is still gasping for breath, sitting back in his chair and simply watching again.

“Are you—” Jon’s voice comes out wrecked, broken up by coughing a moment later, so he gives up on that entirely. _Are you planning on_ ** _doing_** _anything, or just sitting there and watching me?_

Elias hums. “You know, Jon, thinking like that while you smell like that, one might almost think you actually _want_ me to fuck you.”

It catches him unexpectedly. The profanity, the abrupt and biting simplicity of it. It makes Jon’s cheeks burn more than they already were, makes him shudder past the ragged breaths he’s pulling in.

It’s not _true_ , obviously. He does— the heat does want something, some alpha, and he can’t deny that, of course, but Elias? Absolutely not.

Except that an Archive cannot lie about its contents, and Jon has passed by other alphas on his way to this tower, this office. None of them pleasant options - other avatars of other fears, or even humans that he could have demanded they hand over to him as an agent of their masters’ new master - but none of them Elias. None of them Jonah Magnus. He has had options, and he’s known that from the start, and still he had marched ever closer to the Panopticon and to Elias waiting within it.

“Shut up and do it,” is all he manages to bite out, in the end, his voice wrecked and desperate from both the choking and the heat.

“Not the most masterful seduction, Jon,” Elias tells him, all amused fake-disappointment, “But I suppose I’ll let it pass this time. Come.”

He moves Jon forward, half in gestures and half by manipulating Jon’s barely resisting limbs, until he’s sitting on the edge of the desk instead of kneeling on all fours across it. Once he has him there, he starts to remove Jon’s clothes, so slowly as to be near unbearable, until Jon is naked and dripping slick onto the wood of the desk and Elias is still fully dressed, with only the flare of his nostrils and a slight tremor in his hands to give away that he’s not so unaffected as he’s acting.

“Hush,” he says when Jon opens his mouth to urge him on, and his voice has dropped low enough as to practically be a growl. Jon finds himself spreading his legs further without any real conscious thought in the matter, shuddering when one of Elias’ hands comes up to rest on the inside of his thigh.

“Patience, Jon. You’ll get what you need soon enough.”

Elias takes a few moments there, though, only trailing his hand up Jon’s thigh and watching the way he tenses and shudders at the touch. And then he’s leaning in, whip-fast, to sink his teeth into Jon’s thigh. Jon jerks at the pain, the nails of one hand scrabbling uselessly at the surface of the desk for purchase as he arches forward and cries out and then, when the pressure doesn’t let up, reaches out to grab at Elias’ hair with his other hand. 

Elias only makes a noise like a growl against Jon’s thigh, his nails digging in on the other side, and the sound and the pain vibrate through him until he’s coming untouched, shuddering and near-sobbing through an orgasm that feels more desperate than it does satisfying.

When Jon comes back to himself, loosening his grip and panting in rasping breaths, Elias comes up with his hair mussed from Jon’s grip and with Jon’s blood painting his lips red. The sight of it makes him shiver, even as it makes him marvel to see that he even still bleeds, that there’s still blood running in his veins. That there’s more than ink and magnetic tape and an endless well of fear holding this body together.

He’s distracted from his thoughts by Elias leaning in to kiss him. It’s only brief, Elias’ tongue barely brushing against Jon’s own before he’s pulling back again, but Jon can taste his own blood in his mouth and on his lips and he thinks, perhaps, that that might have been the point of it. A tangible proof of what he’d been so amazed by.

It’s disarming somehow - both that Elias would think to do that and the reminder that he’s reading the thoughts out of Jon’s head that Jon wouldn’t even know where to start articulating in words - and it leaves Jon just watching Elias as he stands from his chair and moves in to crowd up against him.

“Are you quite there, Jon?” Elias asks, tone entirely too amused and his lips still stained red at the corners. It brings him back to functioning enough to have him huffing, and he reaches up to grab at Elias’ tie and pull him forward again so that he can lick the last of his blood from Elias’ lips.

It takes a moment for Elias to respond, taken aback as he seems by the motion, but once he’s composed himself he only laughs low in his chest and touches at Jon’s cheek.

“Forward, aren’t we?”

“Shut up,” Jon snaps back. _And knot me_ , he doesn’t say, no matter how he’s aching for it even more after that first orgasm.

Elias smiles indulgently nonetheless, reaching down to finally bare his cock and then probing at Jon’s entrance with the fingers of his other hand. He just barely breaches the muscles and Jon hisses, trying to press into the contact that’s still not nearly enough.

“Go on,” he insists.

Elias opens his mouth to speak, and Jon hisses again, snapping out, “I _know_ it’ll hurt from nothing. I don’t _care_ , Elias, I—”

He cuts himself off. _I need it_ , he doesn’t say, feeling suddenly and oddly fragile, splayed out on the desk with Elias so close but not inside him and the open not-walls surrounding them, the Eye’s whole twisted world spreading out around them. _Their_ world, the world Elias had brought into being with Jon as the vessel, Jon as the catalyst for this horror.

Elias inhales sharply at that thought, and then he’s surging forward to push into Jon in one abrupt, agonising movement, until Jon can feel the knot pressed up against him, already half-swollen. He stills, then, holding onto Jon’s hips hard enough to bruise as Jon tries to get ahold of himself, as ragged, desperate noises escape him with every exhale.

It feels like hours - and is exactly twenty-seven seconds, says the part of him that keeps perfect time whenever time actually truly exists in this world - before the pain shifts enough that he can reach up and grip at the back of Elias’ suit jacket and think, _please, Elias, please_. He doesn’t have the chance to think anything more, because Elias starts to press the knot in immediately, a torturously slow push as his thumbs rub circles over Jon’s hips, and the sensation is all-consuming. Everything else falls away, all of the world around them falling blessedly silent to Jon’s eye as his awareness narrows to only Elias; to Elias’ knot stretching him open, to Elias’ fingers digging into the bones of his hips, to the ragged sound of Elias’ voice as he murmurs low, nonsensical words of praise in a hundred different languages against the skin of Jon’s neck.

Jon shudders with it, scrabbling at Elias’ back. His nails can’t quite get enough purchase in the fabric of Elias’ suit jacket, and he growls with frustration as he reaches up to dig his fingers into the top of Elias’ shoulders instead, hard enough to hurt. Elias allows it without complaint, though, only continuing to grip at Jon and keep pushing the knot in with little rolls of his hips until, with one final push, it’s all the way in and Jon is gasping and shuddering around it. 

It’s not another orgasm, not quite, but he clenches around the knot and shudders on the edge of one, breath coming out in ragged, desperate noises as Elias rocks his hips in slow, tiny movements that barely move the knot inside him. That make it drag at his muscles as it swells further inside him, though, the sensation making it harder and harder to form any kind of coherent thought until there’s nothing at all but the sudden sensation of Elias - finally, finally - spilling inside of him and, a moment later, of Elias’ teeth sinking into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. That’s enough to pull him over the edge himself, and one of his hands comes up to clutch at Elias’ hair as he clenches his eyes shut and shakes through an all-consuming orgasm, crying out until his throat feels raw with it.

When he forces his eyes open again, Elias has lifted his head, lips once again painted with Jon’s blood. Jon’s neck and thigh both burn from the bites, his thigh even worse where it’s pressed up against Elias’ side and staining the fabric of his shirt red, but Elias’ fingers go to Jon’s hair and the pain seems suddenly insignificant in comparison to that; to the fingers carding softly through his hair and to the sensation of the knot still filling him up, moving just barely with Elias’ ragged breaths as they slowly even out into something more normal.

Jon’s head drops slowly to Elias’ shoulder soon after, and he lets his eyes slide shut. Not that it makes any particular difference, these days, to have them shut. If anything, with the heat starting to die away and Elias pressed up against him, warm and grounding and a part of the same thing that Jon has given ever more of himself up to, he sees more now than he ever has with eyes open.

“You think it ought to be horrifying,” Elias murmurs in his ear, voice low and even as he narrates the thoughts that Jon himself can’t fully put into words. “You don’t know what it means, that you see the fears in this world behind your eyelids and don’t wish to turn away from them. You know that you would have done, not so long ago, and you’re afraid of what it means that you no longer do, that you want to see this more than you want to change it back.”

Jon lifts his head, then, opening his eyes to focus entirely on Elias instead of the world outside. Elias only stares back at him, expression as placid as if he were reciting the weather.

“And what do you think it means? You clearly have an opinion.”

Elias smiles, and there’s something so soft and proud-looking in the expression that Jon finds himself almost winded. And then he says, his voice soft, “It means that you’re my Archivist, Jon, and that you’ve done so well to bring this world into being.”

He pauses, and then echoes Jon’s own thoughts from before. “ _Our_ world. Of course you’d want to see - to Know - something that belongs to you just as much as it belongs to myself and to our master, no?”

It shouldn’t be enough. As explanations go, that one should be more horrifying than the feelings themselves. Jon knows that. Just as he knows that to a human, even - or perhaps especially - the human he used to be, it truly would be.

But he hasn’t truly been human in a long time, now. And so he only lowers his head back to Elias’ shoulder and looks out, once more, onto the world they’ve made.


End file.
